“You—you loved him,” I say, stunned by this realization. “I can’t believe it.”
“Ah, love. I was forty-one. I was young,” she says.
“Wait. Did you think he was the man on the other end of your red string?” I ask.
Mom starts to say something but then stops herself. “I misread the signs. Our professional proximity confused me. I was wrong. I know you don’t want what JR and I had. I don’t want that for you, either. You’re looking for real love, for your stringmate, but don’t let proximity confuse you, too.”
So she had loved him. All this time I thought their relationship had been platonic until the night they got together, but it wasn’t like that for her. She thought JR was The One.
“Let’s say when you one day do have feelings for someone and you see the signs, then what?” Mom asks.
Exactly. Then what? It’s the question I’ve wondered for a long time.
Then she speaks my feelings out loud. “Do you think you’ll scare the person away?”
I look at her surprised. “Yes. How did you—oh.”
She returns my expression. “Oh what?”
“I’ll be careful,” I tell her. “When you start to be less careful.”
The wind whips our hair around our faces. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asks.
I cross my arms around my body as the temperature drops with the sun. The pink sky plays off the teal water, a giant mirror reflecting the particles in the atmosphere.
“I just mean, it’s never too late for love.”
For a moment, I think I glimpse disappointment in her expression, but she quickly brushes it off. Even in a moment that allows for vulnerability, Mom’s attitude remains unchanged, her beliefs an armor from more heartbreak.
“Wo ài ni. I’ve been practicing my rarely used language,” she says, thinking for a moment. “Maybe too rare.”
“The tones sound good. And I love you, too. Maybe you also need to go big,” I continue before hearing what I’ve said out loud. I groan. “I did not mean it like that!”
Mom waves me off. “I think I’ve reached the end of my string.”
I dig my heels deeper into the sand, thinking of all the supernovas required to create this beach. “Do you think you’ll scare someone off because of the Red Thread of Fate or because of, well, you?”
Mom grunts. “Both.”
A wave rushes higher up the beach, cutting off our path. We take it as a sign that we’ve gone far enough and make a U-turn back to where we started.
“The thread will never break,” I remind her. “Maybe yours has just been tangled for a while. Likely used for inappropriate things and stretched out a bit. Maybe it will be for a little longer, but it’s still there.”
She sighs. “If you say so.”
I reach around Mom’s shoulders to hug her. “It’s not up to me.”
Chapter 21
ROONEY
That was so trippy,” I say, my head still spinning from the microgravity and full-motion Mars rover simulators. “It feels like I was spun around in a rolling chair a thousand times. Maybe I could re-create that and make a string maze for people to get disoriented in. Then they’d know what that was like.”
“I’d go to that!” Jack says, zigzagging his way behind me. “I feel like a shaken can of soda. This is what being drunk must feel like.” He falls behind, disappearing behind a corner.
I stumble out the entrance doors of the Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island, Florida, as the sun lingers inches above the horizon. It’s the beginning of November so there isn’t much humidity, but the air is still thick.
Seconds later, Jack bursts through the doors, waving his arm in the air. “I got us a little treat! Astronaut ice cream bars.”
